Just a note in advance, though: It’s a transcript (minus some off-topic remarks and outside distractions…), not an edited interview, so it may meander a bit here and there. We talked about blogging and the role of journalism, specifically science journalism, about potential business models and a retraction mystery novel, about science as a human endeavor and a developing culture of error reporting online, about commenters and German readers, about dialogue and the role of humor – and much more. I immensely enjoyed listening to the kind and generous innovator I found in Ivan, and I hope you do, too.

So without further ado – the interview:

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K: What motivated you to start Embargo Watch and later Retraction Watch?

IO: It was actually this conference that inspired me to start these blogs. I have been here every year, this is the sixth year, and I wouldnâ€™t miss it. Because itâ€™s just a wonderful group of people and you learn so much. And itâ€™s just such a supportive goup and we can all criticize each otherâ€™s work in an incredibly constructive way, without it ever being a personal issue. You can even criticize speakers while they are speaking, on Twitter, and people will respond and we all are the better for it at the end of it.

On the subject matter, though: I had always thought a lot about embargoes. This goes back years. When I was at The Scientist, I wrote a few blogposts for the Scientist-Blog, about a couple of situations. And there is a book by Vincent Kiernan called â€žEmbargoed Scienceâ€œ. Itâ€™s his thesis. He was a reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education for many years and then went back to get a PhD in communications or science communication. And his thesis was about embargoes and what effect they have on science and science communication, in particular journalism. So he eventually published that thesis as a book and I always followed his work, I thought very highly of it. And then there were some incidents with WHO, the World Health Organization, the New York Times, the New England Journal of Medicine had something else that happened with embargoes, so I would always write little items about it, you know, think about it a little bit, used the â€žIngelfinger Ruleâ€œ, itâ€™s a fun word to use…

The nice thing about blogging is that it can give voice and a regular rhythm to your obsessions, right? And embargoes really are one of my obsessions…

The Open Notebook is a non-profit organization that provides unique tools and resources to help science journalists at all experience levels hone their craft.

Evan Ratliff, founder and editor ofÂ The Atavist […] writes: â€œThe best way to learn about journalistic storytelling â€” besides writing stories â€” is by taking great narratives apart. The Open Notebook goes a step further, taking us back to the pitch letter, the assignment, and everything it took to get a big piece landed. The focus may be on science, but the lessons found here can be applied to any story.â€

John Pavlus is a filmmaker and science writer, and I very much like this description on his production company Small Mammal’sÂ site:

Video on the web is fundamentally different than television and film, but cookie-cutter formats and half-baked mashups arenâ€™t enough to engage smart viewers. Small Mammal understands what works on the web, and designs each project â€œfrom the idea upâ€ to find the best match of subject and style â€” regardless of budget.

Brooke Gladstone is host of NPR’s On the Media and has now written a beautiful and very informative piece of graphic non-fiction. It’s called The Influencing Machine and although the book is about media and journalism as a whole, it makes some interesting points about science journalism, too. In her chapter about bias, for example, Gladstone explains how science coverage is often riddled by narrative bias [the (perceived) need of beginning, middle and end in each and every story]. And the Scientific American classic of April Fools Day in 2005 on “so-called evolution” gets a full page appearance, too.
Plus: On her way through the history of the media and its discontents Gladstone does quite a bit of (graphic) science reporting herself (on polls, on the neuroscience of free will, on cognitive dissonance etc.).
It is amazing how much information can go into a comic book!